Liber cure cocorum / Copied and edited from the Sloane ms. 1986 by Richard Morris.

Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Liber cure cocorum / Copied and edited from the Sloane ms. 1986 by Richard Morris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    9/96
    The following curious poem on Cookery is now first printed from a transcript of the Sloane MS. 1986, where it occurs as an appendix to the “Boke of Curtasye”'. It is written in a Northern dialect of the XVcentury, pro- bably not much earlier than the time of Henry VI. The author of the poem furnishes us with an appropriate English title in the opening of the work, where he speaks of his subject as “The Slyjtes of Cure”, or, as expressed in more modern English, “The Art of Cookery”. Though the poem professes to be somewhat comprehensive, and treats of a great variety of dishes under the titles of Potages, broths, roasted meats, baked meats, sauces and ^petecure’, it is still far from containing an account of all the ancient dishes, upon the preparation of which the cooks of old prided them- selves so much, as may be seen upon comparing this poem with the tracts upon Old English Cookery contained in Warner’s ‘Antiquitates Culinariae’ and in the ‘Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the government of the Royal House- hold’. ^ Some knowledge of the composition of these dishes is rendered necessary by the constant allusions to them in our early English Metrical Romances, which give the poem an Archaeological as well as a Philological value. * Edited by Mr. Halliwell for the Percy Society, * Referred to at p. 20 n. as “ Ord. and Reg.”